


Photographs

by AngriestPotato



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, POV Third Person, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension, i'm just stalling i'll stop, idk what this is, paparazzi mc, this turned fluffy without my permision, tho the sexual tension remains unresolved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-05-21 08:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14912306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngriestPotato/pseuds/AngriestPotato
Summary: Being an actor is sometimes a very strange game of obsession





	1. Photographs

**Author's Note:**

> Descriptions are vaguely based on CG MC, also she's a smoker so heads up if you're not into that.

The first picture’s a weird one, so strange that he almost asks Seven to remove it from the messenger; then he thinks better of it. If there’s a sure fire way to fuck himself over it’s by bringing the photo to Seven’s attention, so he just ignores it, hopes it fades away under LOLOL statuses and cat pics and no one pays attention to whatever weird thing his fucking face is doing.

Of course, as soon as he lets himself believe it works, the notification pops up on his phone at one in the morning while he tries to watch the stars and smoke in peace.

> _WhERE did you get that picture Jaehee???!!1_
> 
> _Zen, what were you even doing? naughty~_

Zen feels his face go red whether he wants it or not because he saw the damn thing too. He knows that the photo was taken the day before when he took his bike out of the garage for a run, he recognizes the street and the clothes and his own affectionate look because he had missed riding so bad that week. He’s aware that the setting, in context, is simple and innocent; but he can’t deny there’s something a lot like lust hiding in his expression and the way the thing’s cropped doesn’t help his case.

> _It is **not** naughty._
> 
> _It was on Star Magazine’s tripter_

Jaehee, bless her soul, is always a source of good news in general and Zen does appreciate that she tries to defend him even if he himself knows there’s no defense against that look. It had been just so long since he had an entire afternoon to go around; a full body shot would’ve captured his hand on the leather seat and made clear…

> _Was this one there too?_

Seven, unfailing agent of chaos as he is, comes up with a different picture from that same day before Zen can begin to type any sort of explanation.

This one _is_ a full body shot and somehow worse. He’s buying something from a street cart, he doesn’t remember what, and he’s reaching out for it with a smile. The position of the camera makes his body graceful, no matter how he’s twisting himself over the seat ‘cause he was too lazy to get off the bike; his visible leg seems about a kilometer long and his thigh muscles still manage to look perfectly defined under his jeans. It’s honestly a fucking miracle of a shot, so much that he feels a tug of attraction between his hips, and maybe he’d be more worried about the new height of narcissism _that_ is if he wasn’t coming to terms with the fact that he has a paparazzo now.

Zen never does fool himself, he’s still small fry, that’s just a fact he has to deal with; the pictures of him out there, even if they are sometimes featured in e-magazines, are mostly fan photos, he only sees a professional camera when he does the odd photoshoot. This, though, this is a person following him around the city and finding that good an angle without him even noticing. He honestly doesn’t know if he should be worried or excited.

He doesn’t have time to figure it out, at least not at the moment, now that Jaehee’s asking him if he did a photoshoot she didn’t know about and Seven keeps teasing him about having a new fan that finally understands his sex appeal.

> _I didn’t know someone was taking those_
> 
> _Just went for a ride yesterday_

He doesn’t share how he saves that full shot, if Seven wanted to know he could probably pull some sort of messenger logs and figure it out himself.

> _OHHHHH_
> 
> **_Paparazzi?!_ **
> 
> _Our Zen has finally made it!_
> 
> _If all your pictures are like this from now on_
> 
> _You’re gonna be_
> 
> _e_
> 
> _v_
> 
> _e_
> 
> _r_
> 
> _y_
> 
> _w_
> 
> _h_
> 
> _e_
> 
> _r_
> 
> _e_

Zen sends back a ‘you think?’ just to say he answered and logs out. But Seven, as always, is right. By next week Zen has seen his face at least thirty different times in the same quality of photos, mostly because Seven keeps uploading them to the messenger. They’re all candids as they should, not one of them of anything remarkable; they’re just him on his phone, him walking down the street, him stopping for fish shaped bread, but he looks _alive_ in all of them. It’s like the photographer knows his personality and brings it out in every picture, his face is goofy and proud and slightly annoyed; he’s never felt so real.

The reception too, is a thing to behold; he goes viral again overnight, even Jaehee, who had been skeptic of the power of his paparazzo, is over the moon the more photos trickle in.

That’s also the week he finally catches sight of her.

She’s a blur of brown hair with the sunset behind her, an oversized sweater in a surprisingly bright color, the camera slung around her neck and her hands expertly gripping the telephoto lens. And when Zen stops to look at her, she simply removes the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth and raises her hand in his direction, like an office drone greeting a coworker across the street. The gesture’s half thanks, half vague acknowledgement, a goodbye for the day as she walks away.

He hardly has time to make it home before he’s logging into the messenger, spilling excitement all over the chat because this explains so much, his feelings fully shifted to grateful now.

> _She’s a girl_
> 
> _The photographer!_
> 
> _She must be a fan, right? It’s so nice of her to want to help me (_ ✦ _⌒∇⌒_ ✦ _)_

Seven’s just as fast in breaking his bubble this time, which Zen knows is more out of worry and that if he was being rational this is something he’d want to know. It doesn’t stop him from feeling betrayed, though, as if the girl had led him on.

> _A fan wouldn’t be making bank on your photos tho_
> 
> _Hers sell for_ _**big $$$$$$** _
> 
> _Every magazine wants them, most of your fan cafés are losing their minds for them_ _too_

There’s anger and disappointment brewing in the pit of his stomach, so he doesn’t notice until about five minutes later that Seven isn’t exactly shocked that the photographer’s a girl and that _of course he doesn’t_ , he’s the kind of asshole who’d background check other people’s paparazzi and not tell them.

> _Wait, you’ve checked her!!_
> 
> _What do you know?!_

The fucking app hits him with ‘707 has left the chat’ just then and he damn near has a conniption fit.

> _Gd it Seven_
> 
> _I deserve a name at least_
> 
> _She’s_ **_my_ ** _paparazzo_
> 
> _You jerk_

His phone is silent for the rest of the day, no matter how many times he checks between steps of his skin care routine and sips of beer, and it’s frustrating him so much he has to lock the damn thing in a kitchen drawer to keep himself from throwing it across the entire apartment.

But his patience –actually he just doesn’t want to have to buy another phone over this, but he counts it as patience– is rewarded when he wakes up to a text. Not a comment in the chat, a private text from Seven, an ‘I’ll do you one better than a name ^.~ ‘ and a link to a file folder that stands at an ominous 2.48 gigabytes. It’s so weird and sudden and tempting that he has to move onto the computer ‘cause he’s not about to open two and a half gigs of whatever Seven only labeled as another winky face on his phone but goddamn if he doesn’t want to know.

Fifteen minutes later he’s staring at 80 something photos of his photographer; not _her_ pictures, pictures of her. He himself is in the background in a few of the first ones since whoever took them has been apparently shadowing the girl for at least as long as she’s been following Zen.

He sees the oversized sweater again, a few days before in a different lighting that lets him realize it’s actually a vivid green, instead of the blue the sunset turned it into. The brown hair is alternatively up and down, changing on a whim, even during the same day; and she works hard for the photos she takes of him. Some pictures show her crouching between two cars, a couple others, leaning so far off the mezzanine of the theatre where he’s been rehearsing at that he reaches for the computer on instinct. In one she’s smiling down at the camera display and Zen has to consciously try not to grin back.

Then come the off the clock photos and he feels a little queasy, this is way more than he had asked for but he can’t stop stabbing the right arrow key; her building is shitty, shittier than his, like a factory haphazardly repurposed into apartments. It reminds him of buildings he’s seen in movies and like the movies, whoever Seven sent to take these pictures has a privileged view into it, as if they’re stationed at a window directly across the street.

The girl’s pretty, Zen allows himself to like her because at this point he has much more reasons to feel guilty; the photos of her in nothing but a long shirt, for example, and the way he imagines gently pressing his fingers where the hem of it sits over her thighs. The curtains most of the time make her into a half ghost, patches of soft skin and sometimes the hint of a smile. A hand where neck meets shoulder, stretching; the curve of her spine and beauty marks splattered over her shoulder, dipping lower under her bra that somehow make him want to _lick_ them.

He has to stop, take a lap around the apartment and a few good deep breaths. He still has time for his morning run –he’s already goddamn winded so that’s redundant–, or a quick breakfast barring that; he chooses to sit back down with a piece of toast in his mouth just to have it occupied in any form. The girl’s not posing or performing for him, she’s not even aware he’s there; it’s the casualness, the reality of her that has his blood rerouting to his dick slowly, gradually but inexorably like good foreplay does. This lack of pretense is his deepest darkest desire laid out for him; he wants to have that, wants to _be_ that.

Zen taps on, the clicking of his keyboard’s by now a monotone drone that makes the silence ring when he freezes in his tracks because the girl is seated outside a café, huddled under the table’s umbrella to keep her messenger bag from the rain, looking straight at the camera.

He moves on almost nervously but the next photo still has her eyes set on the lens, this time while she fishes a cigarette from the pack; one more picture and she’s lighting it, completely ignoring the warm glow of the flame and the way it turns her eyes golden, animalistic. Her expression shifts in that triptych: amusement, anger, defiance. A crooked smirk and eyes dead focused like she can see him being a creep through the screen. It makes Zen keep watching even if his arousal has turned into a dull ache in the back of his awareness, though he doesn’t notice how on edge he really is until he reaches the next frame and he pretty much flinches out of his chair.

The girl is leaning back on the café seat, cigarette to her lips and giving the camera the most obvious bedroom eyes he’s ever seen. Her throat is bared, framed by her coat in a way that still makes her look completely naked, and him feel like not even all the showers in the world can clean him of this, of her. He’s so surprised, his fading erection almost makes him sick.

His phone goes off beside him and he has to rush over to rehearsals with nothing but that one toast and his proverbial dick in his hands because his literal genitals might as well have taken a kick and he doesn’t even have time to keep guilting himself into nausea. He forgets even to call Seven and complain about this entire situation, and he wishes he could forget the face that he spots half behind a telephoto not ten minutes after he leaves the apartment.

The whole day feels off, like it’s been sent to him from hell itself and actually when he thinks about it, he deserves it. Zen can’t help but swivel his head every five minutes and he can’t concentrate on a single thing, facts his paparazzo has registered perfectly when he finally gets home, greeted by Seven’s new addition to the chat. There’s only one photo, not even half of the usual number, a shot of him for once looking at the camera –he tries not to make the mental association and fails miserably– where his face is blessedly not absolutely red and guilty, just _intense_. Weird and sad and like he wants to reach out and grab at the photographer, like he’s longing for it, openly, embarrassingly, so _so_ true.

And it’s the last picture she ever takes of him.


	2. Coffee

 

> Zen
> 
> Z E N you can’t still be mad
> 
> _o p p a a a~_ _?_

Seven’s notifications fall one after the other, dinging incessantly in Zen’s pocket. It’s been a while since he’s been ignoring the messenger, he feels a bit bad about it but if it’s been sparing his friends of the weird mood he’s been caught in then it’s for the better right?

At least Jumin doesn’t have to complain about the avalanche of pictures of him in the chat anymore, Zen has to admit that he misses that; he wants the attention they brought back too. But mostly he misses _her_ and the way she saw right through him.

There must be something wrong with him if he can still see her among familiar things; he looks for the sudden bright sweater and brown hair he couldn’t miss if he tried. He checks behind cars and in the gaps between buildings like he’s searching for a cat. He doesn’t even sneeze at the thought, his nose gets itchy, yes, but he figures it’s too ridiculous to associate the idea of her with his allergy. It makes her feel further away than he’s comfortable with in this weird fantasy where he imagines her returning any second.

The city itself seems to have been reshaped, walking the familiar streets back to his apartment turns into a game of imagining all the places she could be at, all the other artists in town she could be seeing for all they are.

His stomach feels as if it tumbles down the street just thinking of it, and after Seven’s surveillance photos he doesn’t even want to consider –because it isn’t his place, he tells himself, as if it changes anything– who she could be allowing to see _her_ for all she is. The soft smiles and the messy buns; the oversized shirts and bedroom eyes.

He doesn’t know if it was the pictures themselves or his base reaction to them that last morning but he had been so angry about them in chat that Seven threatened to ban his emojis, which is what he does when the self hatred gets this bad, he lashes out. The pictures she took of him were intimate, always seeing too deep under his princely façade but his paparazzo at least had never snapped him in little more than underwear.

Zen stops at an intersection, the sun looms low in the distance, and he feels a crooked smile work its way onto his face, so much for the brave Zen the Knight.

The click of a camera in his immediate vicinity makes him nearly flinch off his skin.

He turns on his heel so fast he almost knocks himself off balance, and he has to take a moment to make sure he’s not losing it. It’s her, half a block behind him, camera lowered just enough to see her eyes and the apologetic grin she throws his way.

  
“Sorry,” he finds that he recognizes her voice, the way it suits her so well, even if it’s the first time he hears it, “Couldn’t help myself.”

“What? Why are you…?”

Her expression settles into something far more serious, but she steps near anyway. Zen’s chest tightens, they’ve never been this close; something, somewhere in his solar plexus, burns like good booze and the rush of it is almost as good for his courage as being drunk.

“I didn’t think I’d see you…”

He doesn’t say ‘again’ or ‘here’, no matter how they echo in his mind; he’s already aware of the lightness in his tone, the old-friend voice he’s using.

“I was just…” she points vaguely behind her without looking, still walking like she might let herself crash straight into him, “this side of town has the best theaters.”

She finally stops, two or three steps away and Zen tries not to radiate the kind of golden retriever curiosity he most definitely feels. Her face scrunches up, conflicted, as if she’s deciding whether to bring something up or not.

“How’s your friend?” she asks, “…the redhead. Luciel Choi, I think?”

  
Zen could swear the world stops breathing with him, frozen in a weird mix of terror and shame because against all rational thought, against everything he’s been repeating in his head just to keep the guilt at bay, she _knows_.

“I’m sorry, fuck I’m so _so_ sorry…”

He can barely stumble out an apology, gesturing wildly, nearly grazing his fingertips against her arms at this distance. Her expression is unreadable and it kicks his heartbeat into double time, pumping what feels like the entirety of his blood up to his face

“I can explain, I swear, I didn’t ask him to do anything, I’m so sorry. I’ll buy you a coffee, please let me explain…”

The bout of laughter she answers his word vomit with is so surprising it takes a minute for him to realize that she is apparently not angry at him, or Seven.

Her hands rise to hover over his biceps, which in turn makes Zen realize he’s taken both her elbows in his palms –barely, just enough to feel the soft knit of her sweater– at some point during that half coherent explanation.

“I have half a mind that you didn’t even know about them,” she looks down, still frowning but still pretty much in his arms, “at least not until that last day. I’ve never seen anyone look so guilty.”

Zen’s head bobs like one of those decorative dogs, for all his make believe this entire interaction drives him to silence. He just doesn’t know how to keep himself from feeling too much for this girl already. She’s seen the worst of him, the clumsy, petty parts of him he hides for dear life, and she hasn’t looked down on him for it.

“I really want to explain, though,” it’s more of an involuntary mumble that he only barely realizes he’s voicing out loud, “how did you know about him? He didn’t say anything weird to you, did he?”

She shakes her head, a strange look on her face that somehow reminds Zen of the way he thinks of himself sometimes.

“I um, he’s not very inconspicuous,” the end of the word is tilted up like a question, “and there’s photos of you together at those charity parties you used to organize. They’re not hard to find, I just image searched you.”

Zen is quiet, his brain stalling a little. He’s aware that he’s overthinking this, the usual formula where he’s the charmer instead of the charmed doesn’t apply and he has to admit he’s a bit lost in its absence.

She smiles at his hesitation, and Zen will come to be so familiar with the tinge of self consciousness in it in the coming months but for the moment he just squeezes her elbows gently, mostly out of fear that she’ll walk away.

  
“Join me for that coffee“

He doesn’t elaborate, though something in his face must be enough to make his case because she chuckles a little and falls into step with him as he wracks his brain for the nearest café.

  
It’s only later that night, when he’s left her at the train station safe and with his lighter in her jacket pocket, that he realizes he didn’t think of his fans and what they might think at seeing him out with someone at all that afternoon. 

> !
> 
> sneaky

Zen’s phone dings and he can’t help but beam at the text from the unknown number, glad that the digits he scribbled in marker over the cheap lighter were legible. He rushes to save her number and while he’s at it he opens the messenger.

> SEVEN
> 
> I’m not mad anymore~
> 
> Be grateful I’m such a forgiving friendㅋㅋㅋㅋ

For tonight he also doesn’t mind Jumin’s sarcastic “magnanimous~” comment that follows either.


	3. Polaroids

“I can’t photograph you anymore.”

His heart does a somersault between regret and jealousy in the silence of a late afternoon at home. It’s been hardly two months since she took the last picture of him, and it’s not like he hasn’t given her chances; he’s spent so many nights riding back to his apartment after a coffee or a movie in her almost supernaturally comfortable couch.

So he scoffed a little at her, mostly feigning offense… mostly. Now, hours later, the churn of guilt in his gut won’t let him sit still.

Back in her apartment she laughed, reaching up to tuck his bangs behind his ear. They were cramped together in her balcony, already a luxury in her building no matter if it’s small enough that Zen could feel her hip nudging his.

Zen tries to push past that particular memory of sensation because if he gets lost on the warmth of her so close to him, it’s way easier for him to ignore the crease of her brows and the cold drop of realization down his back. The calmly calculated tone of her voice when she finally spoke as she retreated back into the apartment.

“It’s getting late, you should get home”

  
He didn’t see it then but it’s crystal clear after a run and a couple cigarettes; he’s witnessed it a million times, ‘friendships’ where one of the parties is clearly getting benefits from the other. And she’s probably very familiar with those, if she’s been around the shark tank of small-right-now-but-the-next-best-thing theater types like himself for long enough.

She likes people; that’s what rules her ever changing rooster of subjects, she enjoys the way bodies move, how thoughts and feelings show in different facial expressions. He _isn’t_ special.

On the other hand, no one ever managed to take such candid pictures of him, and the fans noticed. They flocked to forums and shows to catch a glimpse themselves of the Zen that peeked through her photos.

Zen’s chest goes tight and he has a very vivid vision of grabbing her wrist the moment she turned back and telling her how he could never use her. Not for fame or recognition or anything, that he can hardly breathe normally when she’s close because it somehow feels like he’s entirely made out of heart when they’re together. That he’s fucking terrified of how fast he fell for her, like he wasn’t even aware of it until it was so big he couldn’t deny it.

He stands in the freezing roof and squints at the distance as if he could see her apartment from here; he takes a deep breath and he whispers to the humid air all the things he couldn’t say to her face.

Then he crushes his unfinished third smoke underfoot and makes the way down to crash into bed half numb with cold.

He wakes up to the unrelenting sound of his phone at six in the morning, ready to kill someone until he makes sense of her name above the string of texts and his heart fucking tap dances.

> you’re very good at what you do Zen
> 
> you know what people want of you and if you see a camera you give it
> 
> i just…
> 
> when you’re not paying attention everything you feel shows on your face
> 
> you’re fascinating when you’re being you

He can’t help the true puppy grin the screen reflects back at him, or the plan a part of him still considers stupid forming in his head.

> Can you come to my place today?
> 
> I have rehearsal but
> 
> I need to see you

Zen feels a little bad for the cryptic answer but he’s not sure he can make any promises without swinging by the store first.

His morning is a clumsy one and he doesn’t really know if it’s nerves or excitement that have him so jittery, even the director teases him about performance anxiety. The idea makes him laugh, however nervously, because that’s exactly it; he just never thought he’d find something in his personal life that mattered as much as performing does.

He’s so scatterbrained that he runs late, though it doesn’t help that he probably should’ve given either Yoosung or Seven a call before showing up to try and buy a polaroid camera when he barely has a general idea of how the things look.

He takes the corner of his street at a half run to see her hesitate, her fingertips a couple centimeters from his doorbell. She drops her hand and Zen can’t tell if she already rung but it doesn’t seem like it, she just fidgets, shakes her hands and takes a couple aimless steps side to side. Then she turns, sees him and goes so red Zen is tempted to pull the camera out right there and ruin the surprise.

  
“You rung?” he asks, a bit out of breath and her guilty smile confirms she hadn’t. “Sorry, I…I had to run an errand.”

“It’s fine,” she pretty much talks to his back as she follows him into the flat, “I just got here.”

“I, um, I don’t keep much here but I got tea,” Zen rummages through the plastic bag hanging from his elbow, which is in hindsight the perfect cover, ”or coffee.”

She takes the can he offers while he retreats into the kitchen to set water to boil and wrestle the little black camera out of its box. He at least remembered to ask the girl who helped him at the store to load in a pack of film, so all he has to do is look through the hole and click the moment she sets down her coffee and looks at him.

  
The face he sees live is much more surprised and in much better focus than the one slowly appearing in his hand and she can barely let out a confused noise when his excuse is already spilling out of his mouth.

“You’re fascinating, too.”

  
Her expression takes some time to fully turn into a grin, one so relieved Zen has to stop himself from dipping close to taste the easy happiness of this moment from her lips. She reaches for the camera but he slips past her, out of the dead end of the kitchen to the many escape routes of the living room, keeping the polaroid out of her reach as he goes.

“Oh no, this camera is exclusively to take photos of you.”

“Zen!” her laugh makes his name the most beautiful sound he’s heard in his life.

“Hyun,” he corrects and moves back away from her even if she tiptoes and swats at his biceps. ”And I mean it, I have only ten photos ‘cause I don’t know how to reload this thing.”

  
He snaps one more shot of her as she bends over with laughter and another of the way her tongue peeks out of the corner of her smile like an actual emoji when she attacks again. It’s an eye opening experience in how hard it is to try to navigate his apartment and take photos at the same time, and in exactly how dedicated she is, jumping and stretching. Her eyes narrow in joy like she’s staring at the sun and it makes him feel blinded too, enough of a distraction that he loses his balance under her insistence.

She gasps, caught in his momentum and his reflexes only allow him to turn both their bodies to fall haphazardly onto the couch, not avoid the fall, but she’s still giggling and grabbing at air, bare millimeters from his hands. So he flips upright on instinct and holds the camera triumphantly over his head.

It takes her face softening into something like wonder and her hands on his hips, steadying him over her, to realize that his victory left him straddling her, practically sitting over her stomach where she’s slumped half off the couch.

  
“Oh”

His voice is practically gone and his arms are stuck in position. He can’t move, not with the slight pressure of her palms over him, right where his legs meet his torso.

She’s silent, still looking up at him like she’s asking for permission and something in Zen’s gut tells him to get up and apologize but most of his brain is caught in the way her eyes darken the same way they did once in that photo that now feels like ages ago.

“I think I’m in love with you.”

She mumbles, the last word raw and wavering, and Zen melts. His body becomes a clumsy pile of too long limbs, disconnected as if he’s dreaming or floating or falling in the long moment it takes him to fold over to kiss her, camera still in hand and a couple photos scattered on the floor by their feet.

Her hands slide heavy down his legs, her fingers drawing a path of fire down the back of his thighs all the way to his knees, so his answer comes out breathless against her lips.

“I’m in love with you too.”


End file.
